About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 70644 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

New Year's programming resolutions

It's that time of year. In no particular order, here's a quick list of goals for Paul-as-developer in 2007.

Convert my remaining legacy PHP code (side projects and regular work both) to Django.
Write a useful PyObjC application.
Make some kind of contribution to Python itself, if possible.
Continue to add revision control and deployment automation to existing projects, as well as using it on new projects.
Continue to add unit tests to existing projects, as well as using them on new projects.
Learn a new language well enough to write a useful (small) application. Current candidates (all of which I've done at least enough reading on to have specific reasons for my interest, and some of which I've written toy programs in) are Haskell, Common Lisp, Io, Objective-C, and Ruby.

So, what about you? What are your coding goals for 2007?

Monday, January 1st, 2007
django + programming + python
7 comments

Some related posts: Making your way from PHP to Python and Django • A Mercurial mirror of Django's Subversion repository • Django.June • Two new Django-powered sites • dpaste.com • Pastebin update: Pygments • The twenty-minute trouble ticket system • Django, Rails, and PHP • CodeZoo • Python web framework mania

• Comment from Lawrence Oluyede , later that day

I tried with PyObjC but I couldn't make it work so I gave up. Anyway I chose my 2007 new language and it's Erlang. See my first "tests" at http://www.oluyede.org/blog/category/erlang/

• Comment from Ville Säävuori , later that day

PyObjC looks interesting. Maybe I should add it to my list. Don't know what I could possibly do with it, but still =P

But, my goals for 2007 are:

* Convert my (fairly large, in Finnish) site _fully_ to Django from PHP and static pages.
* Learn more Python.
* Contribute to Django somehow.
* Learn unit testing with Django.
* Learn (better) the basics of functional programming.
* Attend to EuroPython ( http://www.europython.org/ )

Hopefully I'll manage to shorten that list at least with one item :)

• Comment from Daniel Lindsley , 1 day later

* Finish our tumblelog (built on Django of course).
* Build another PyGame application.
* Add unit testing to all future programs.
* Expand my knowledge of Javascript so that it's no longer a "last resort".

I have other aspirations but that'll do for now.

• Comment from Christopher Arndt , 1 day later

Hey, the last four resolutions sound just like mine!

I always wonder, if it would be worth, if not learn to love, at least learn to program Java properly. At least from a career perspective. But I am now self-employed, so I get to decide which language is used for the projects and that means it will be Python most of the time ;-)

Some of my additional goals:

- Learn Django by creating some microapp (so I am able to form a well founded opinion whether TurboGears is really better ;-)

- Write less comments in Blogs and mailing lists and more code ;-)

• Comment from Rod Hyde , 1 day later

* Contribute to an open-source project that uses Python; the most likely candidate is Pyglet as it combines two things I enjoy, namely Python and games.
* Finish a game during the next PyWeek.
* Use C# to write a tabbed-notebook app similar to KeyNote.
* Finally get around to writing that genetically programmed RTS (and then I woke up).

• Comment from mike , 2 days later

Do you have considered the just released but very good "D" Programming Language?

It compiles, and is much more worth learning than for example ruby :D

• Comment from Paul , 2 days later

Yeah, [D][] looks very cool and it's certainly getting a lot of buzz. If I were a Java, C++, or C# programmer I'd be all over it, and even so I'm more interested in it than any of those three. But my superficial impression is that it's a C-like language which has taken good ideas from dynamic languages -- making it not "different" enough for the mind-stretching aspect of my particular quest.

[d]: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/